No More I Love Yous

By Willow Taylor

It was a beautiful warm day during an Indian summer, that Maggie saw something strange. Victor had stripped his shirt off, baring his pale skin to the sun. She had already noticed that he never seemed to tan, but this was the first time she'd seen him without a shirt. Unbearably curious, she paused as she went past, to get a good look at him. He did have muscles, though they weren't immediately obvious, and he swung the ax in an easy, repetitive motion that she envied, having done that task many, many times. But his chest muscles - which were quite pleasant to watch, really, were marred by a great network of scars that began at his throat and dribbled their way down his chest, centering slightly at his stomach and disappearing into the waistline of his pants. Maggie jerked her eyes upward, realizing that Angel had stopped, and was smiling at her in his easy way.

"Yes?" he asked, leaning on the ax briefly.

"You... Your chest..." she stammered, blushing - his chest was not precisely where her thoughts had been.

"Oh," he said, and looked down. After a moment, he looked up again, with a smile. "Does it bother you? I'll put my shirt back on..."

"No, that's alright, really," Maggie said, her blush getting brighter. "Uh.. We're having potato soup for dinner with sausage..."

"That's good," Victor said with a faint chuckle, and set back to chopping wood. "At sundown?"

"Yes," Maggie said, distracted again by his movements.

"I'll see you then, I guess, unless there was something else?" Maggie shook herself, and laughed.

"No," then she took herself inside as quickly as she could. 'Silly woman!' she laughed at her self. 'Gawking like a convent-born and drooling like a baby.' She only hoped she wasn't as obvious as she thought she was.

As point of fact, she had been, and Victor was chuckling to himself as he chopped, getting caught up in the rhythm. 'I could really get used to this,' he realized. 'The entire farm stick. I may even learn to milk that bedamned cow. There hasn't been more than one visitor here all fall - I could be safe - '

"Hey!" called a familiar voice, interrupting Angel's thoughts. Adrian came up, driving the sheep. "You'd best get cleaned up, eh?" he called to Angel. "It's nearly dark, an' you want ta be inside by then." Angel looked at the small pile of wood he had left from today's load, and began to work at it swiftly. No sense getting behind do to a little darkness. The full moon was already rising, and his eyes could still see fine. The sun was almost totally down when Adrian came scuttling back through and he finished the last of the wood.

"Come now!" said the sprightly boy. "Get going!"

"There's a good moon," Victor said lazily, stretching. "There's plenty of light."

"Plenty of light for them ta get ya!" Adrian said, and Victor took up his shirt and followed the boy.

"And who are 'them' pray tell?" the drifter said with a hint of amusement in his voice. Adrian turned and gave Angel a look that would have shamed a devil.

"They ain't some old spook I'll tell ya that!" the boy said. "I 'taint as young as all that!"

"How old are you, any how?" Victor had discovered that the entire family was younger than they looked as if the well in the backyard was some sort of preservative.

"I'm old enough ta see how me Mama looks at you," snorted the boy, "But I'm telling you, Angel those things I'm talking about aren't some boy's fear-dreams."

Victor shook his head, "Then what are they then?" He grasped John's halter and led him towards the barn. The large horse pulled up one more mouthful of grass and came along willingly.

"No one knows. No one's gotten close enough to see without dying."

"That's a good description," snorted Victor, lighting a clove. He led the huge gelding into its stall and patted it under the mane. The horse had been grazing long enough it was cooled and calmed, and only needed a bit of grain and water for the night. Adrian hung on the edge of the stall door.

"I'm fourteen summers, Angel." The dark haired drifted turned to his small, fiery haired companion and raised his eyebrows elegantly.

"A bit scrawny are we?"

"Don't rub it in," growled the boy. "But I knows what I'm talkin' about. My sis' can see 'em in the distance during the full moon."

"Sounds like werewolves to me," Victor said, shrugging and locking the stable door behind him, ambling towards the house

"Wolves?" Adrian snorted. "Damn but we wish t'were but the shift wolves!" Victor looked up at the vehemence in Adrian's voice and the boy fixed Victor with a sharp blue-grey eye. "Why da ya think we needed yur help so badly?" The conversation was cut off as they entered the house.

There were twin yelps of horror that brought Victor out of his half-dreaming rest state gun in hand. It took him a quarter of a minute to figure out what the fuck was going on, and where in fact, he was. Then he was on his feet and dashing up the stairs - there had to be a reason for those noises. Maggie was sitting on her daughter's bed, trying to comfort the hysterical child. Victor spared half a moment, to admire the sight of the two of them together, hair all unbound, then rushed, the next room over, that scared him worse, because after the first scream, Adrian had been silent. With one hand, Victor flung the door open, and practically leapt inside. Adrian sat with his back against his headboard and a knife clutched tightly in one fist, facing the window. It took Victor a moment to recall that the last time he'd seen the boy's room, the bed's headboard had been below the window. Moonlight streamed in the window, pouring like molten silver over the furniture.

"Adrian?" Victor asked. "What's the matter?"

"Is... Is Sarah and Mama alright?" Adrian asked.

"Yeah, and you could see that yourself if you got out of your bed."

"There's something under it," whispered the red haired boy, eyes wide as saucers. Angel reached for his lighter, and flicked it on. The bright flame dispelled the silver magic of the moon, as Victor carefully knelt and glanced under the bed. Shadows fled from the light in his hand and he thought he caught a glimpse of something... terrible... but nothing else. Adrian leapt out of his bed and latched his arms around Victor's neck as the drifter rose back to his feet.

"What the...?" Angel said in confusion, and a little nervously. Even wielded by a small boy, a knife that close to his back made him nervous. Even still he shut the lighter off, and hugged the small boy back. Then he turned, and still bearing the slight boy, headed down the hall. Sarah's chamber was brightly illuminated and the window thickly curtained. Maggie looked up as Victor entered, then nodded as he set the frightened boy on the bed.

"Now," Maggie said. "What's the matter?"

"There's monsters out there," Sarah said softly.

"There's monsters in here too," Adrian supported calmly. Maggie shot a look at Victor for support. Angel just crossed his arms across his bare chest, tucking his gun under one arm.

"Maggie," he said in his softest, most considerate voice. "The boy is right. There is... something in this house. At least tonight."

"I told you Mama," Sarah said. "And they are there, every night!"

"I can only see them on the dark and the full moon, but they're there, Mama!" chimed in Adrian.

"Children..." Maggie said calmly. "The lights are on, the shades drawn - no monsters will get you tonight." They looked at her with wide eyes that sought for reassurement. "You two get back to sleep, and Angel and I will be right next door - if you wake up and see anything - call." The children nodded. They lay down, and clutched each other tightly in the way of the utterly innocent and terrified. Maggie half closed the door behind herself and Victor. Victor's dark brown eyes looked at her impassively.

"What do you mean 'there is something'?" she hissed at him. Angel calmly stuck his gun in the waist band of his pants, and Maggie found herself against the wall.

"Simply that Maggie; now, tell me what you didn't before - what is in this house?" Maggie's off lilac eyes widened in fear. Then she went limp.

"I don't know what it is." Maggie looked terribly young, her light brown hair falling about her face haphazardly, and knees tucked up to her chin.

"But there is something here?"

My husband...."

"Yes?"

"My husband always seemed to keep it at bay... but it's been getting worse since he died."

"How long ago was that?"

"Years," whispered Maggie. "I thought... maybe if I ignored it, it'd go away."

"You were raised in a town, weren't you?" Victor lit up a clove and blew smoke at the ceiling. "These things do not go away, Maggie. They have to be stopped." Maggie pressed her face to her knees. "There's no two ways about it. Things like I thought I saw in your son's room." He blew another mouthful of smoke, and chose his words carefully. "It's evil, Maggie." There was a small noise.

"Maggie?" He extinguished the cigarette and leaned forward towards her. She looked up at him, and tears streamed down her face.

"Oh, God." He opened his arms, and like her son, she sought safety there.

"I'm sorry."

"S' not your fault," she sniffed, burying her face in his hair.

"Shhh..." he whispered comfortingly.

"I try every charm I can think of, an' nothing helps."

"Shhh..." He smoothed her hair.

"I try and I try, and every now and then, we get up and some sheep are dead, or the chickens are bald, or the crops have a clearing in the middle of them!" She paused, and looked sickened. "And some times it's worse... we've lost three cows and a half dozen sheep."

"How often does this happen?"

"It's irregular." Maggie sniffed, and Victor stroked her hair again. "It hasn't happened in the weeks you've been here - I was hoping that'd finally stopped," she almost wailed. "But now it's back, and it's worse..."

"Shh... you mustn't let the children hear you," Victor whispered.

"Sometimes I think it must be something that I did... something that I didn't do..."

"It's not your fault Maggie."

"I can't even see the things that my children do," she sobbed. Victor did his best to comfort her, cradling her in his arms and whispering reassurements until she was asleep again. As Maggie drifted asleep, Angel kissed her gently on the top of her head. She was so fragile seeming in the predawn light. There had to be something he could do. Even... even if he had to go to the Guild. Victor dozed off as well.

When he woke up, Sarah and Adrian had clambered onto the bed with them. Angel couldn't move a limb without disturbing someone. He shook his head, and slowly disengaged his arms from around Maggie, then slid out of the bed, leaving a tangled pile of sleeping figures. He picked his gun up from the bedside table, and padded back downstairs to get dressed.